Once Upon a Christmas Past Read online

  “Your point?” Andrew asked.

  “He has four sons as well as daughters. Two of whom are bigger even than Rob. When I spoke to Jamie earlier, he told me they would be returning tonight. So I won’t go down that easily.”

  Andrew shook his head, then turned to look over his shoulder toward the marquess.

  Finn’s gaze followed and settled on the marquess, his hand placed possessively over Leslie’s on the table. “And Andrew,” Finn said steadily when what he truly wanted to do was march over there and hack off the bastard’s offending hand, “if the pistol fire ye spoke of has anything to do with the two weapons stolen from Camlochlin, let me warn ye that I’ll be taking those back as well.”

  “Finn, I implore you—”

  The sincerity in his tone pulled Finn’s gaze to him.

  “I wouldn’t see you come to harm.”

  Finn smiled at him.

  “And if we lose the Douglases support we can never return home. Surely, you, whose ancestors came from these hills, understands the pull of one’s birthplace.”

  “Aye, I do,” Finn admitted easily. “But even the memory of a man’s birthplace fades when the heart of a lass becomes his home. Surely, after leaving yer home twice to keep yer woman safe, ye understand.”

  Andrew stared him deep in the eyes for just a moment, then lowered his gaze and turned away. “Promises were put to paper. They cannot be undone. There are laws.”

  “Those laws mean nothing at Camlochlin,” Finn reminded him. “Ye’re not a man with no choices. Ye just have to decide if yer sister’s life is worth less than anyone else’s in yer family.”

  “Hers is worth more,” Andrew told him. “For it is she who keeps the rest of us from persecution, or even death.”

  Finn set his cup down on the table. Was he supposed to see the light now? He stood from his chair. To suddenly understand why Leslie should be sacrificed?

  “’Tis ye who put the rest of yer lives to threat with yer decision to return to Dumfriesshire. As the eldest, ye’re to guard them, not use them as pawns. The marquess doesn’t love her. He doesn’t even know her. Ye say he’s promised to keep yer kin safe, but what does he gain from this union?”

  When Andrew didn’t answer right away, Finn continued on with what he had to say. “Return to Skye,” he warned, tired of being patient. The time to act had come. The only way to have her was to save her kin. Whether he wanted to presently, or not. The best way to save her kin was to get everything out in the open here in the Highlands, where he had a better chance of keeping them alive. “Whether yer sister returns to Dumfries with ye or not, my kin will keep ye safe…even from him.” He motioned with his chin to the marquess. “On that, ye have my word. But I put this to ye one more time, Andrew. Return to Camlochlin and be free of persecution and death at the hands of yer enemy. The choice is a simple one. Yer home, or mine?”

  Andrew continued to glare at him, unwilling to give an answer, so Finn walked away, determined to see his task through. He would avoid actual fighting for as long as he could and hope that his kin arrived in time to keep his head off a spike in the inn’s front yard.

  He smiled at Margaret and at Leslie’s mother when the sight of him coming drained the blood from their faces. He would do his best to keep them from harm but his main concern was keeping Leslie from the marquess’s bed.

  “Fergive my intrusion.” He glanced down at Douglas and then flicked his gaze to Leslie. He did nothing to stop his expression from softening against her angry scrutiny. He knew he was lost to her. Love had caught hold of his heart and had taken complete control. It fired his thoughts, his passions, and his actions. “Have I seen ye someplace before, lass? Mayhap in a painting in a more heavenly kingdom than this one?”

  Instead of arching a raven brow at him, Leslie could have gone pale like some of the others at her table. But there was a reason he’d fallen in love with this woman. “You think quite highly of yourself if you believe you descended from heaven.”

  Honestly, how the hell was he supposed to keep from smiling at her like he had just laid eyes on the sun after a long, frigid winter? He looked away and tossed his quick, wide grin at the others instead, including the marquess and Andrew, who’d caught up to him. “I place blame fer such vanity at the feet of Heather MacDonald. She’s been known to liken me to starlight and—”

  “What do you want at this table, thief?”

  The flash of metal against the firelight drew Finn’s eyes to the marquess’s hand and the barrel of a pistol aimed at his guts.

  Andrew sprang to his side, much to Finn’s surprise. To the untrained eye, Leslie appeared unmoved by the event. But Finn noted her stiffened spine, shallow breath, and pale knuckles while she squeezed her hands together.

  He expected her to be strong, intelligent. He didn’t expect her to speak up.

  “Before you shoot him, my lord,” she said, betraying her fear and anger with the slightest crack in her tone, “you should know that he is Finlay Grant, bard of the chief of the MacGregors of Skye, son of Graham Grant, who for over a score of years led the Devil MacGregor’s charge against the Campbells and who personally aided Charles Stuart back to the throne.”

  Finn didn’t care who was watching; he stared at her openly, wondering why she would give him and his identity up so easily. Had she truly accepted her fate then? Did she not love him as she claimed before Camlochlin’s entire Hall?

  “Before he appeared at the table,” she continued to Douglas, ignoring Finn’s attention and disheartened expression, “you were asking Alan for the whereabouts of the MacGregor holding.” Her gaze cut to Finn’s beneath her long veil of lashes. “As I told you, my lord, we were blindfolded on the way in and the way out. Mr. Grant, on the other hand, could prove far more useful.”

  He was a fool to have doubted her and would make it up to her for the next year. She had just given his enemy a reason to keep him alive. He would have bowed to her masterful mind. But he didn’t move, preferring pistol fire to his innards rather than the smile gracing Leslie’s lips. A smile she offered to her newly betrothed.

  “I may need to torture him for the information,” the marquess told her.

  She shrugged her shoulders. “If you do, then be prepared to kill all his kin once you find them. How many would you say there are, Andrew? Four hundred?”

  “More likely five,” her brother corrected.

  “Yes, more likely five,” she agreed. “And every single one of them, man or woman, will hunt you down until you’re found, and then they will butcher you for what you did.”

  “You protect him,” the marquess accused her, moving the barrel in her direction.

  “I protect you.” She stood to her feet and shook her head, looking down at him. “What becomes of my family after you and every other Douglas in Dumfriesshire, and likely all of England, are butchered in your beds? I lived with the barbarians. I am afraid of them, as you would be if you weren’t a prideful fool.”

  Finn recognized the glimmer of amusement and interest in the marquess’s eyes while he sized Leslie up. Finn didn’t like it, since it was the same amusement and interest he felt toward her when they first met. It wouldn’t do to have the marquess lose his heart to Leslie. He’d be that much less willing to part with her.

  “And you.” She turned her glacial gaze on Finn. “You have seen me in Skye. Our paths crossed when I left with my family and you returned from wherever you had been. We all enjoyed your entertainment tonight but I am betrothed to the marquess and your flowery words fall on deaf ears. Do not waste them on me again.”

  Finn watched her leave the dining hall with her kin and did his best not to let his gaze linger on the sway of her fine hips. He carried his grin to the marquess and let it fade just a little at the pistol, back to pointing at him.

  So, Douglas wanted the whereabouts of Camlochlin, did he? Most likely to give it to Prince William and to the enemies of the MacGregors.

  Finn had to move quickly. His task would be e
asier now that she had provided the armor he needed. He’d thank her for it later.

  “’Twould seem ye and I both have something the other wants.”

  The marquess laughed and tucked the pistol into his breeches. “And what, pray tell, do you want in exchange for betraying your clan and bringing me to their home?”

  Turning to look over his shoulder at Leslie climbing the stairs, Finn’s smile turned into something harder. “Her.” He returned his attention to the marquess. “I want one night with her.”

  One night was all he needed.

  Chapter 9

  Leslie blew breath into her fists but it did nothing to warm her. She had to have been mad to agree to meet Finn at midnight, outside, in the freezing temperature. But he’d sent her a message that it was urgent. The marquess’s men were sleeping in the barn, so she and Finn couldn’t meet there. But honestly, what in blazes was there to talk about? What was so important? Would they speak about how much they were going to miss each other? How different and empty their lives would be now? She rubbed her already red nose and willed the tear threatening to fall from her lid to stay where it was. She should have stayed in bed.

  “Ye’ll need to get used to this weather, bonny Leslie.”

  She didn’t turn at the sound of his voice, for she knew who it was. Besides, she didn’t trust herself to look at him.

  “You need to go back to Skye before he tries to force you to tell him about Camlochlin.”

  “I’ve already agreed to take him there personally.”

  She spun around to glare at him from beneath her hood. “What? Why would you? Oh, Finn, when I told him who you were, I didn’t mean for you to—”

  “My price was a night with ye,” he cut her off softly. “He agreed to it.”

  They both knew what it meant, but it was Leslie who voiced it out loud. “He agreed to wed me in order to come here and gain the directions to your home. That was all he wanted. He hasn’t stopped badgering us all night for the whereabouts to Camlochlin. I’m not surprised, really. I knew he wanted something other than me. It’s just as well, for I will never love him. In fact, I find him quite repulsive.”

  Finn smiled at her as if she’d just promised him the world. “That pleases me,” he said softly, “because I’ve come to take my night, and thousands more after it. I’ve come to save ye, Leslie.”

  If only he could without it costing lives… “I don’t need saving.”

  “Ye want to live a life of misery then?”

  “If my misery means saving the lives of those I love with my whole heart, then aye, I will live such a life.”

  Lord, why did he continue smiling at her? She wanted to smile back. An instant passed before she gave in to the temptation and then rushed into his arms when he moved toward her.

  They collided in a tangle of arms and languid, longing sighs that set fire to the air. She met the ardor of his kiss with the same need, hungry for the taste of him. How was she going to leave him again? She couldn’t. He shouldn’t have come, but her heart rejoiced that he had. He groaned at the passion between them. His embrace, pulling her deeper into him, heated her blood, her body.

  “My life returns.” His voice was low, his breath warm against her cheek when he broke their kiss.

  Leslie closed her eyes against him when he spoke, echoing her thoughts.

  “I don’t want to wed him, Finn.”

  “Ye’re not going to, my love. ’Tis I who will have ye as wife.”

  She looked up into his eyes, colored a deeper emerald in the twilight winter sky, and felt her heart go soft in her breast. It wasn’t his beauty that made her want to fall at his feet, but the passion he felt for her emitting from every inch of him. It was too dangerous. He’d come alone and didn’t stand a chance against the marquess…or Alan’s pistols if he tried to take her away.

  But now that he was here, in her arms, how could she turn him away again? “I cannot be your wife.”

  “If we could,” he asked her, snatching up her hands and bringing them to his lips, “would ye wed me?”

  Here was that moment that could change everything. She had but to lie to him and she was certain he would leave and go home without her.

  “Aye, I would. I knew I would be weak,” she confessed when his grin blazed across her heart, carefree and confident, almost as if he knew nothing of peril or the evils of lesser men. She placed her fingertips over his mouth and shook her head at him. “I need you to be strong. You must help me do the right thing despite its terrible cost. Please, Finn. If you were killed I don’t know—”

  “I won’t be killed, love, but ye must trust me.”

  “Trust you with what?”

  “With what I’m going to do.”

  She felt his hands moving over her back, caressing her curves. She thought she asked him what he meant to do but the only sound that left her lips was a tight little groan. She had so wanted him to be the one who took her maidenhead. She’d dreamed of it, letting it warm her during the cold Highland nights. He rubbed his rough jaw down her cheek and his hardened angles over her weakened ones.

  “Trust me, beloved.”

  She smiled dreamily and then opened her eyes wide when he swooped down and tossed her over his shoulder. For a terrifying instant, she was too stunned to resist. What the hell was he doing? He was going to get them all killed! Oh, she would never forgive him. Not even in the afterlife.

  “Finn! Are you mad?” she screeched at him and pounded his back. “Put me down this instant!”

  “Hush, lass,” he warned while he ran for the shadows, one arm coiled around her legs, the other over her rump. “Lest someone hear ye and shoot me dead.”

  She froze against his back and swore to do it herself if she ever got her hands on Colin MacGregor’s pistols.

  “We’re all going to be shot dead…or hanged,” she argued in a hushed tone. “Don’t do this.”

  “’Tis already done. I’m taking ye home, Leslie. Back to Camlochlin with me. Where ye belong.”

  She wished she could kick him for sounding like the kind of man an ancient woman might have found lumbering about in a cave. But judging from the way his declaration numbed her kneecaps, she wouldn’t have been able to lift her foot to him.

  “There was something I wanted to ask ye the night ye left home.” He stopped running when he reached a chestnut stallion tied to a branch beyond the tree line. “I never got the chance.” He looked up into her eyes while he transferred her from his shoulder to his saddle. “My heart—”

  “You there!” a voice called out in the dimness. “What do you think you’re doing stealing that horse?”

  One of the marquess’s men approaching from the barn! Thankfully, he was still too far away to see who he was shouting at. Leslie shook with a wave of sheer panic and fright. Finn may have been granted the marquess’s permission to spend the night with her, but surely he hadn’t agreed to let them leave Glenelg. They were about to be caught. Finn would be brought to the arquess and…

  “Take another step,” Finn warned, cocking the locks of two pistols as he drew them from beneath his mantle. Alan’s—or rather Colin’s—pistols! “And yer friends will be trying to avoid yer brains in the grass when they ride out.”

  The oncoming soldier skidded to a halt, both palms up. Silence clung to the frigid air while they all waited to see who would move first. The soldier did, turning and running away. Finn chased him into the darkness. He returned to her a moment after Leslie heard something crunch a few feet away.

  “Did you kill him?” she asked when he vaulted into the saddle behind her.

  “Nae. I just gave us some time.”

  “Finn, I beg you,” she said when he flicked his reins and set the stallion racing against the wind. “It’s not too late to stop this madness.”

  “My madness,” he told her, dipping his mouth close to her ear, “began the day ye took possession of my heart. ’Tis too late fer me, lass. If ye go, my reason fer breath goes with ye.”
/>   Oh, how many times could she resist him? How was she expected to stay strong when he poured out words like these to her? But she had to stay strong and resist him. “Finn, if you disappear without filling your end of the bargain, the marquess will follow us. He’s an experienced swordsman. If he finds us…” She couldn’t go on.

  “All will be well, fair lady.”

  She closed her eyes against the bracing wind and the rush of tears threatening to spill from her eyes. Was tonight the last time she would see her mother and brothers? And oh, what would become of them in Dumfries without the marquess’s support? Was this her and Finn’s last night alive? The marquess would surely kill Finn if he discovered Finn had kidnapped her without leaving the information he wanted about the whereabouts of Camlochlin. She wanted to cry out, to beg Finn to take her back before it was too late, but she couldn’t. Not when a part of her wanted to go, to spend one night with him.

  “Tell me again that you love me. Make our dying worth it.”

  She heard his laughing on the wind behind her. “Och, Leslie, I love ye too much to make dying worth it. We’re going to live. We’re going to be happy. And I’m going to save yer kin while I’m at it.”

  Chapter 10

  Finn reclined in a shaky chair beside the hearth fire and reflected on the journey back to Skye so far. It hadn’t taken long but he considered it among the most tiresome and draining of the many journeys he had taken. The main reason was that at every turn, Leslie tried either to convince him to bring her back to her brothers or she argued with him about the foolishness of his endeavor. By the time they’d crossed the Narrows and entered Kylerhea, Finn doubted his sanity twice and thought about gagging her.

  His weary gaze went soft as it traversed her form where she slept in the last available bed at the Otter House. He wasn’t sure kidnapping her was his best course of action, but he had no other choice. Asking for a night with her had gained him time to take her home, a full night to be exact. He’d stopped at the Otter House so that she could get a few hours rest and a soft bed where she could lie with him. He didn’t intend to remain there long.